When you remember something you’ve been forced to do, or manipulated to do, or some awful act of humiliation and subjugation you’ve been put thru, or something you did unknowingly, that you got over-punished for, you feel such in-containable amount of shame it’s difficult to even think about the event. Shame is suffocating your ever sense and physically so painful you’d rather die than be forced to re-live it again.
I realized today that the level of shame we feel is as if this happened to us now, today, as if we were put thru it as adults, right this second. We didn’t know as children it was so humiliating, so wrong, so shameful and disgusting to be put thru that, we couldn’t feel that shame right away, but now looking back we realize what happened was extreme and disastrous, and damaging our human dignity without repair. Some of the shame is what we know society and abusers would cast on us for it, some of the shame is cautionary, warning us to not do it again, to not expose ourselves to such horrible humiliation again, because we would not survive it.
But, once the extreme mountain of shame lessens a bit, and you’re able to see more clearly what was going on, you can imagine if you saw that exact thing happen to another child. You would immediately know the child is in trouble, that the child is suffering, in great need of help and empathy, you’d be able to see that the child did nothing wrong, nothing to be ashamed about, you would feel nothing shameful about the child, but instead rage at everyone who did that to the child.
There’s no difference between you and any child who is being put thru something humiliating. If you can slowly accept that you were just a child, and it’s not shameful for children to do stupid stuff, even things that would have been embarrassing now, aren’t embarrassing then. You would not shame a child for being manipulated, punished, coerced into something, you’d feel bad for them, you’d want them to be comforted, to be told it’s not their fault. You’d want someone to have empathy for them, to understand them, to tell them they’re still good, lovable, and that they deserved nothing bad to happen to them.Â
All of this is true for you as well. You deserved someone to tell you it’s not your fault, to hug and comfort you, to tell you that you’re lovable and good. That’s what should have happened for you too. And you should never have been put thru anything that would cause this much shame, and this much trauma. None of this is on you. All of this shame and guilt should be hitting the person who inflicted this on you. It’s literally all their fault.
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